The Republican journal. [volume] (Belfast, Me.) 1829-current, 1887-03-31
A Great Invasion.

| Following his late visit to this country, Mr..
Grant Allen wrote an article for The Fort
| nightly Review, in which he expressed serious
| apprehension for the future of our New Eng
| land landscapes Oh account of the great inva-
sion which we are suffering from the ''agsres-
sivc weeds of Europe and Asia. "The daisy,
the primrose, the cowslip, and the dafodi have
stopped at home; the weeds have gone to col
! onize the new world.r ''NoNious and dusty
roadside plants, of which thistes, nettes, hem
bahc, and mullen may be taken as fair average
types, are beginning to turn the whole world
in our day into one vast wecdbed of universal
samcness.''
very casual observer of New England
fields and roadsidcs must have noticed some
thing of this great weed migration. Many
weary day the farm boys of Maine have spent
in gathering the oN-eye daisies and yellow corn
flowers into bundles to burn them; but in the
majority of cases the weeds have got the better
OF human vigilance after few years of conflict.
One can scarcely walk for half a mile on any
railroad track without finding some new emf
grant weeds which have sown themselves upon
waste spots, but have not yet had time to col
onize the neighboring fields. They travel by
| rail or steamer, and by all the best modern
methods; but they do not stop at stations.
Let one take a text book of Botany, and
glance at the descriptions of some of our most
common weeds, such as buttercups, may-weed,
shepherds-purse, hemp-nettlc, and chckweed,
and he will be surprised to find under how
many he may read "Nat. from Eu." Some of
these weeds we are told attain more vigorous
growth, and become more pernicous than be-
fore, after their emigration; so that the emin-
ent naturalist informs us that there is danger
of "tiie utter extinction of all the beautiful To-
cal plants which to-day give interest and varie-
ty TO each fresh quarter Of the world we visit
Farmers have often shown me plants which
their wives or daughters had cultivated for
years in their gardens, and which had at
length spread over their fields, and become
serious pests. The introduction of some of
the latest comcrs, such as the species of red
hawkwccd (IIieracium Aurantiacum>, may
prove as great Il curse to an agricultural COM
munity in the end as the contagon of small
poN. This utterly useless weed | have found
not only Ill fields. where it spreads with five
fold the rapidity of almost any other noXious
plant, but far up the mountains, u mile or
more from any cultivated land. The fair hand
of farmers daughter has often lnwttinglv
introduced to his domains such an enemy
which viii! contest with him every rod of his
broad acres, and never give up the struggle as
long as il single plant or seed remains alive 1t
seems to me that such gloomy views of the
future as have quoted do not make sufficient
account of mans agency. In our good State
during the last thirty years, nearly one and
half millions of acres have been brought under
cultivation. We often see large fields of good
grass from which the weeds have been almost
entirely bani>hcd; but surely it is Il pity that
man by simple carelcsSnesS should do so much
to aid the introduction of one of the worst
foes of his husbantrv.
Such facts also suggest an unpleasant fe;-
ture of the working of the law of natural Sc
lection as we see it in operation to-day. Prof.
John F'iske has expressed the belief that evo-
luton having reached its elimination in man
is now less active in the physical world, and
is chiefly to be seen. at present, in intellectual
and moral development. If it is true that the
coarser and more vicious plants are to triumph
in the end. the working of natures laws in
the vegetable world would seem to be toward
degradation.
Surely we must feel that man came upon the
stage none too soon, for. Il little later. Ga few
million years perhapS,) he might have found
the corn and wheat eXterminatcd, and nothing
better to eat than weeds upon which only Il
donkey can liye. Il. B. MERRILL.
Brewer, March Is, 1881.